Library Theft Isn’t Petty : Make This Crime a Felony, With Prison the Penalty

The conviction Monday of Charles Merrill Mount for interstate transportation of stolen historic documents does my heart good. Now I am anxious to see whether the court follows through with a sentence tough enough to punish the crime and deter archival theft.

Mount was arrested while offering a Boston book dealer materials that belonged to the National Archives. He was charged under a federal statute and faces a maximum 10-year prison sentence and $500,000 fine. Hard time in prison usually follows a conviction for grand theft/auto, a felony. In most states, the theft of historic documents is in the same category as shoplifting, a misdemeanor, even if the papers are worth as much on the legitimate market as, say, a Porsche.

The light penalty for these crimes has contributed to an epidemic of library thefts. I am not speaking of the $15.95 best seller that a reader fails to return to his branch library, although these losses take an annual toll on public library budgets. I am speaking of major thefts of archival treasures that lie at the heart of our national heritage. Some notable examples reported since 1979: Rare books worth $500,000 were stolen from Harvard’s zoological library; $20,000 worth of rare science works disappeared from the DeGolyer collection at the University of Oklahoma; $200,000 in rare documents were smuggled out of the Thomas A. Edison National Historical Site.

In the DeGolyer case, the guilty party was convicted of interstate transportation of stolen property, but given a suspended sentence and ordered to perform “community service.”

The theft of early printed books worth more than $100,000 from Boston College landed the thief in jail, but only for a few months. Hardly the kind of sentence one would expect for making off with a Porsche and four or five Hyundais--the equivalent value of those rare books.

The Mount case, involving a very high level of treasured American papers, has raised anew the question of how such crimes should be handled by our judicial system. Mount, an art historian and self-styled “aristocrat”--was arrested after asking $64,000 for letters written by Abraham Lincoln and Civil War generals, which had been in the National Archives. He was accused of having already sold (for $20,000) letters by Winston Churchill, James McNeill Whistler and Henry James, which belonged to the Library of Congress. It was not determined how the materials left the Archives; Mount testified that he bought them from sources in Europe.

The disappearance of historic documents is bad enough. What’s shocking is the attitude conveyed in some media accounts of Mount’s arrest. Newsweek described Mount as “a curiously sympathetic character” and went on to note that “Americans like a man who invents himself--it’s an old American custom--and if there’s some humbug, that just adds spice.”

Do Americans really consider trafficking in national treasure a romantic sport? If Mount had been convicted of fencing a stolen Porsche and a few Hyundais, instead of equally valuable documents, would magazines be calling him a “sympathetic character?”

The lighthearted treatment of this case only adds to the seriousness of the problem.

Since 1979 I have been working to protect archival materials as a member of the security committee of the rare books and manuscripts section of the Assn. of College and Research Libraries. I served as committee chair for four of those years, working with librarians from across the country. Our committee’s agenda has been to publish guidelines for libraries to follow in order to identify and secure their collections properly. A part of the theft problem deals with the attitude of some library officials. Often, thefts are swept under the rug because of fears that donors or the public might withdraw support if they thought that library security was weak. And when the material is recovered, the usual attitude is, “Well, we got it all back, so let’s keep it quiet.” That attitude must change.

The security committee also works to promote cooperation among the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Assn. of America, the FBI and local law-enforcement agencies in their efforts to capture thieves and recover stolen property.

But our most important challenge, perhaps, has been to seek changes in the law to make the penalties for library and archival theft commensurate with the crime. We have written model legislation that changes the classification of archival thefts from misdemeanors to felonies. Several states (California is not among them) have passed our recommended legislation and other states are currently considering changes.

The Mount case indicates that our committee’s efforts have begun to hit home. Mount was arrested as the result of steps taken by the Boston book seller in contacting the FBI when materials of a suspicious or uncertain source were offered to him. The National Archives and the Library of Congress publicized their intention to prosecute.

We librarians and archivists spend our days trying to balance the preservation of our collections with the American people’s right to free access to these materials. It is a measure of our free society that our citizens and scholars can come and go freely to our repositories. When the aberrant few among us take advantage of that freedom by stealing archival materials, they are stealing our cultural heritage from all of us.

A groundswell of national support can come forth to restore treasures such as the Statue of Liberty. Let’s see a groundswell in the name of preserving our documentary heritage--a groundswell that will motivate Congress and state legislatures to change laws regarding library and archival thefts.

Let’s call thefts of the magnitude of those described here what they are: felonies. And let’s call the people who perpetrate these crimes what they are: criminals who must be made accountable to society.